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To early 20th century archaeologists digging in the Middle East and South America for 2,000-year-old artifacts, the most popular woman in America was artist M. Louise Baker – and she lived in Wallingford!

An artist, Baker worked at University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology from 1908 to 1936. She traveled the world at the request of archeologists to illustrate their finds. Watercolors and reconstructions make up the over 500 works of hers that are in the Penn Museum today.

In retirement, Baker lived on Brookside Road with a studio above the garage that had a large window for sun and views.

Dr. Elin Danien, a research associate at the Penn Museum, will give an illustrated talk about Ms. Baker and her art on Wednesday, April 25 at 7:30 at the Helen Kate Furness Library.

Come learn about a Nether Providence resident, well-known to others, but not to us – until now.

In February, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a piece about the Kassab family. Penned by a granddaughter of the patriarch who brought the family to Nether Providence, the article was entitled A Syrian Immigrant’s American Story. Marie Kassab Helfferich described her family’s roots in Syria and the welcome they experienced as immigrants at the turn of the twentieth century.

The family is so well established in Nether Providence and Media that you would be hard pressed to find a longtime resident without some connection to a Kassab. Many were patients of the family – more than a few of Dr. Kassab’s progeny were or are dentists.

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Well-known local historian, Nancy Webster, has an article in the newest issue of Early American Life. Entitled How the Lesser Sort Ate, it is about colonial cooking for every-day people. The women could not cook all day because they had many other jobs to do, including raising children. Nancy writes about what cooking tools they had, what foods were available when, and even sharing of food. The article grew out of a recent presentation Nancy made at a meeting of the Historic Foodways Society of the Delaware Valley, held in Warminster, PA.

The article is not posted on the magazine’s website, but you can pick up a copy at Barnes & Noble.

The April 17, 1916 Chester Times carried a report of a horticultural exhibit at Bickmore Farms where Milton H. Bickley had a large nursery operation on his property at Palmer’s Corner (the corner of Providence and Rose Valley Roads).

The flower show became an annual event to which the public was invited every year on Palm Sunday.

Milton Horace Bickley owned, along with his father, a drug store at 4th and Market Streets in Chester. He purchased the 102-acre Cedar Lane Farm from James Miller in 1913 and called it Bickmore; a combination of his last name and his father, Mortimore Bickley’s first name. There, he raised a variety of flowers in 19 large greenhouses (300′ x 75′). There was a 75′ smokestack for the furnace used to heat the greenhouses.

The family also ran a poultry farm on the property. In 1916, there were regular advertisements placed in the Chester Times announcing “we have just installed a big hall incubator and decided to do some custom hatching. You can bring, or buy your eggs from us. We also have baby chicks for sale.”

Milton Bickley died in 1937.

In 1944, W. J. Messmer, a Chester florist, purchased the Bickmore nursery on the south side of Rose Valley Road. The purchase included 60,000 square feet of glass-enclosed greenhouses.

By 1954, the 15 acre site had been purchased by the Wallingford Development Company. When the nursery buildings were razed to make way for 22 houses, it took two blasts of dynamite to level the smokestack. The neighborhood was named Bickmore Hills. The first of the split level houses were completed by July and offered for sale at $15,590.

The show stars Wallingford’s Gabrielle Miller as Bridget Rose Fitzgerald. Set in 1910, her immigrant journey from Ireland includes steamship passage through Ellis Island to lower Manhattan and the sweatshop known as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. “The New American” reveals a timeless immigrant experience and the meaning of liberty and opportunity.

The performance is suitable for students in fourth grade through adults, and is made possible by a generous donation from the Rose Valley Borough Council and staff in honor of Lynn Kelley, a former council member and current volunteer at the library.

2 p.m., Sunday, March 8th in the Library’s Chadwick Auditorium.
The program is free and open to the public, but registration is recommended. Call 610-566-9331.

At its annual meeting, the Delaware County Historical Society presented its A. Lewis Smith Award to Angela Hewett, president of the Nether Providence Historical Society and long-time president of The Friends of the Thomas Leiper House. The award is presented annually to an individual who has made “significant contributions to the preservation of the history of Delaware County.”

Angela has conducted extensive research into the Leiper family and has edited two booklets – a compilation of correspondence between Mr. Leiper and Thomas Jefferson and another of his correspondence with James Madison. She is also the curator of the Leiper House; organizing and training its volunteer docents and coordinating the many events and programs hosted there.

She was on the steering committee for our township’s tricentennial celebration in 1987 and helped found our historical society soon after. She is also a board member of the Delaware County Historic Preservation Network.

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s “Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories” seeks to ferret out the hidden, but often important, archival collections held by the many small, primarily volunteer-run historical organizations in the five county Philadelphia area.

Today is the anniversary of the beginning of World War I, so they focused their post on the collection of materials we hold related to the Byre family. Von Byre served in WWI and kept a journal of his June 1918 voyage to Europe on a troop ship.